A Study in Stress : <i> Angst </i> of Finals Grips UCI Campus

It is every college student’s final exam nightmare. It’s the bad dream that, decades after graduation, can still cause former students to awaken, bathed in the icy sweat of sheer terror.

It happened to Carole Loo.

As a freshman at UC Irvine, Loo studied until dawn for a biology final. Thinking she had time for a short nap before the 10 a.m. test, she set her alarm clock and fell soundly asleep. She awoke almost four hours later to a blasting alarm and the realization that she had snoozed through the first hour of her test.

“I pulled some jeans on over my pajamas and ran straight to the lecture hall,” she related. “I opened the door and there were 400 students in the middle of the exam. I had an hour to finish the two-hour test. But the teacher felt so sorry for me, she gave me an extra 15 minutes.”

Loo, who got a B in biology despite her slip-up, wouldn’t recommend the method to anyone. Now, as a world-wise sophomore in the midst of finals this week at UCI, the student from San Jose said she tries to keep fatigue in check.

“The experience scares you enough that it couldn’t ever happen again,” she said. “Now, I don’t mistake the adrenaline of finals week for energy that can sustain me. When I’m tired, I go to bed.”

Just in case, though, Loo arranges a backup. If her alarm clock doesn’t awaken her, a roommate will.

Finals week--it’s a rite of college, an intense period when sleep is a luxury, coffee is a staple and any social activity that doesn’t involve flash cards is out of the question. It’s marked by a distinct lexicon: An “all-nighter” is a marathon study session, and “stress case” describes the emotional state of most students.

At UCI, where nearly a third of all undergraduates major in engineering or biological sciences, academic competition is always keen. But the stress level is never higher than during the proving ground of June, when the future--or just a summer respite--wait around the corner. More than 15,000 students scramble for fewer than 1,000 library seats, and when the library closes at 2 a.m., the especially desperate or dedicated move to the adjacent Commons building, which stays open all night.

For the overloaded, overwrought undergraduates at UCI, it all ends today. For the 2,477 seniors scheduled to graduate on Saturday, that’s not soon enough.

“You always say to yourself, ‘If I can just get through this week, I’ll be OK,’ ” said Kwan Kim of Irvine, who expects to graduate Saturday with a double major in the disparate fields of engineering and psychology.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” Kim said on a recent afternoon as he roused himself from a slumbering sprawl across two library chairs. He figured it would be days before he got any sleep as he prepared for four more exams. “This is the hardest time of the year.”

Concentration flags after 24 hours or more without rest, Kim acknowledged. But for the short term, he said, it’s worth it. “I was behind for the class I had a final in this morning. By staying up all night and studying, I was able to do well.”

Katherine Anderson, a senior majoring in French, described her condition while preparing for exams as one of “complete panic.” She tried to rest, but anxiety got in the way.

“It’s not easy to sleep because you’re thinking about the things you should be doing,” said Anderson, 23, of Irvine. “Last night, when I finally did get to sleep, I dreamt I was going through a labyrinth and I couldn’t find my way out. Think that means I feel trapped by finals?”

Hours after completing her last test, Anderson relaxed at a tree-shaded table in the university’s Gateway Plaza. Looking around with restored perspective, she said the campus always seems tense and deceivingly deserted during final exams.

“You can see it on people’s faces,” she said, gesturing toward students going in and out of the library. “Everybody is serious and quiet. The campus is desolate. Everyone is in the library with their nose in a book.”

But stress, an unavoidable part of finals week, is not all bad, suggests David Engstrom, director of mental health services at UCI’s Student Health Center.

“One of the tricks for high performance is to maintain a moderate level of stress,” said Engstrom, a clinical psychologist. “Too much stress, and students blow it. If stress is too low, they don’t stay motivated. That’s why we don’t want to take the stress away. We just want to help students deal with it.”

For many students, the competitive academic atmosphere and the added strain of final exams is too much. Demand for mental health services during the last three weeks of each spring quarter jumps 50% to 75%, Engstrom said. Student clients are treated with biofeedback therapy, relaxation techniques and, in rare cases, tranquilizers.

“UCI is a very high-pressure place,” he said. “A lot of kids put extra pressure on themselves, and they don’t seek help until it really builds. They feel they have to get A’s.”

For many who aspire to graduate studies, the need for top grades is the reality.

Stacey Rice, who says matter-of-factly that she plans to change the world, wants to go to law school first. Although she is now just a sophomore, she worries about maintaining the minimum 3.7 grade-point average that she will need to get into the UCLA College of Law.

“I had a 4.0 (straight A’s) before my finals, but if I don’t get A’s on the tests, I could end up with a 3.0,” said Rice, 20, of Santa Ana.

“I’ve tried to get A’s since I was in first grade. I value education, but right now, it’s the GPA that’s the most important thing. It’s no solace to try as hard as I can if I don’t do well. The pressure is on.”

Rice, whose undergraduate major is environmental health and planning, drilled for a research-methods exam one afternoon recently with classmate Tamara Crain and 2,000 definitions written on index cards. Crain, who plans to go into elementary education and administration as a career, also wants to attend graduate school.

“We’ve already killed ourselves in this class,” said Crain, 19, of Long Beach. “I have to get a good grade because this (education research) is what I’m going to be doing with the rest of my life.”

In the meantime, Crain said, “I don’t have a social life. I told all my friends, ‘I’ll call you after Friday.’ ”

Remarkably, some students seem to get through finals week relatively unscathed by stress.

Stephanie Eagle struck a Huck Finn pose one recent afternoon, stretched out on the rolling lawn of the campus’s Aldrich Park, a straw hat tipped over her forehead and class notes held up for review. A tantalizing 30 feet feet away, the wood-frame skeleton of Saturday’s commencement stand rose on a hill.

Eagle, a senior who has applied to attend UCI’s Graduate School of Management next fall, said four years of experience have helped her approach finals with calm.

“When you’re a freshman, everything is new and demanding, and you feel like you have to be the perfect student,” said Eagle, 22, of Tustin. “By your senior year, you mellow. I try and get the best grades I can--an A or a B. But I don’t kill myself. In your last quarter as a senior, you can’t do much else to your GPA. You just have to relax.”

And then there are students like Joseph Nunez, whose biggest worry during finals week was that he wasn’t sufficiently worried.

Emerging from a two-hour biology final, Nunez stumbled backward, dramatically clutching his hand to his chest. “I did pretty good,” said the sophomore biology major from San Gabriel. “But the test was too easy. Was there something I missed?”

While finals week isn’t fun for anyone, it is a valuable time when students synthesize all they have learned in a quarter or semester of study, contends Mark Petracca, an assistant professor of political science at UCI.

“I don’t think we should alleviate the pressure,” Petracca said. “I think there is an intellectual advantage to the concentration that occurs during finals.

“The nice thing about finals week is that it ends. It’s a finite period of time, and no matter how much you screw up, it ends.”